The Fallen Star

The Fallen Star

A Story for All Ages By Aaron McEmrys

A long time ago, there was a young star. Well actually, she was just a young part of a much bigger, much older star.

But after several hundred million years of doing her part to keep the homefires burning, the young star part started to get bored. “It isn’t really all that interesting of a job, when you think about it”, she thought with a sigh – “spending a couple billion years doing nothing but squishing tiny atoms closer and closer together until they start to blaze with heat and light. It’s kind of like being a glorified trash compactor! And for what? Our light and heat doesn’t even do anything, we just hang here in the darkness like the loneliest Christmas ornament ever.”

But one day, the young starling happened to be working on the very outside of the big star, and she could see far into the vast reaches of space around her. Flickering in the great distance, she could see other stars, but they were so far away she knew they would never meet. She sighed again, feeling lonely, and was just about to go back to crushing some more atoms when she saw, just barely, at the farthest reach of her vision – a tiny round ball floating all by itself in the darkness.

She looked at it for a long time, and her heart swelled. The little ball looked so sad and alone, and she longed to comfort it. Longed to meet something other than herself, to go somewhere other than here, where she had lived out her whole life so far.

After that she peered out at the little ball whenever she got the chance, and she became more and more curious about what it was like, and if they could be friends. Then finally, when she felt she couldn’t stand another moment of pointlessly crushing atoms into light – she just did it – she jumped. She jumped toward the little ball as hard as she could, pulling herself away from the rest of the old star. She pulled and wrestled and squirmed and burned and suddenly she was rushing through space toward the little ball.

The starling landed on the little ball with a tremendous fiery crash. She slowly regained her senses and looked about her to see what she could see.

The ball was very cold, and the only light was the soft silvery glow that came from the starling’s warm body. All around her were statues made of dark, frozen stone. Statues of all kinds of things that she had no names for, but would later learn, things like: trees, rivers, mice, ducks, mosses and mooses, clouds, hamsters, golden retrievers, monkeys and goldfish and snakes and dolphins and deep, deep oceans. The little ball, she discovered, seemed to be made of nothing but statues, nothing but frozen things that could not speak. And so the young starling felt even lonelier than before. She sighed again, and her body pulsed with heat.

Suddenly, she felt something moving underneath her. She looked down and saw that one of the statues was moving – hard black ice was melting off of the statue and underneath was a furry little creature kind of like a giant hamster.

The creature looked up at her, squinting its eyes in the bright light and asked, “Is it morning already?”

The starling didn’t know what the word “morning” meant, and so the hamster had a lot of explaining to do. It seemed that there had been a star around a very long time ago – probably the very same star the starling came from – but one day it got tired of looking after the little round ball and it pulled far back inside itself and left the world in darkness. Everything froze almost instantly, and had remained so ever since. At least until the starling came and started warming things up a bit.

“So my warmth is good?” the young star asked?

“Oh yes, my dear, it most definitely is – I feel downright alive!” the hamster chucked, stretching his paws for the first time in eons. “You see, we are all the things that might be, but are not yet. We’ve been waiting for you. I have to say though, I am feeling a bit peckish. Would you mind defrosting some of that sweet grass over there?”

“Of course I will. How’s this?” The starling took a deep breath, concentrated and exhaled, gently breathing life into a small patch of sweet green grass, which the hamster began to nibble on most appreciatively. The starling was very proud of herself, and it made her feel good to see the hamster so happy. She giggled, a wave of silver heat washing off of her, and fish began to jump in a small lake for the first time in millennia.

The starling was beside herself with happiness. With every breath she could feel new life all around her. She could feel all the little bits of herself melting the ice, starting tiny hearts beating and tiny raindrops falling. She could feel herself in all of these things, in every raindrop and every ocean as if she herself was both mother and baby at the same time. This filled her with great joy.

With every breath more of the little ball woke into life, looked up into the bright sky and saw the starling beaming down at them. They smiled, squeaked, grunted, whispered and rustled their thanks and love back up at her. Every time she breathed in, the starling took all of that love inside her, becoming bigger and bigger and brighter and brighter until she had to float higher and higher in the sky to avoid accidentally burning anyone. The starling breathed in love and breathed out heat and light and soon the whole planet was singing.

“Hello up there” a little hamster voiced squeaked, “ and thanks for everything. But I still have one more question, what is your name? We need to call you something, you know.”

“I don’t know. I have never had a name before.”

“Oh dear of dear, now that is a shame. How about this, I was saving this for my next daughter, but I don’t think she’ll mind – how about we call you ‘Sun?”

The Starling, Sun, blazed with joy. “I love it – I am Sun, I am Sun, I am Sun! Yes, I think it suits me very well. What shall I call you now that we are such good friends?”

“My dear Sun, we all of us have the same name. We are called Earth.”